Awesome Startup Tools – Picture This

Awesome Startup Tools – Picture This

These are a few of the image tools that I use on a regular basis. When you need an image, the wonderful photographers involved with the Creative Commons have put millions of photos into CC with various licenses that let you use their photos. All of the uses require attribution, and for those of you who plan to use Haiku Deck, you’ll be happy to know that in that system the attribution is built-in.

In Flickr, be sure to pull down the type of license you need (located at the upper left of the site). Then add the attribution on your site or in your post, or print. [“Attribution” is telling everyone who took the photo that you’re using.] A link back is nice when possible, and it’s also good to leave a comment under their image in Flickr, letting them know that you like their photo, and where they can see it on your site or social media.

Wikimedia is the image side of WIkipedia. Once again, it’s a wonderful place to find images that people have placed into Wikimedia for the benefit of all of us. Many time when you can’t find a historic photo anywhere else, you can find them here.

Startup Stock Photos is an awesome group of photographers who have been taking high quality photographs that are perfect for startup blogs and promotional materials, and they post them up for free use. I love this collection of photos, and I really appreciate the photographers that have taken part in this project. Between, Flickr, Creative Commons, Wikimedia, and Startup Stock Photos, I would be shocked if you couldn’t find something close to what you need.

Placeit is an interesting site. Low resolution photos created on Placeit are free, but there is a charge for higher resolution images and videos. It took me awhile to figure out why Google acquired this company, and then I found what they did with videos and embedded apps and with photos and embedded websites. It’s very cool, and although there is a charge for these creations, it’s a fraction of what it would cost if you were setting up a video shoot and doing it yourself (and the quality is probably better than what you would create from scratch as well). Definitely check out Placeit.net.

I’m including one additional image tool that I didn’t bring up during the Lunch & Learn Lecture, and that’s the Google Nik Collection. It’s a group of filters that work with the Adobe Suite, primarily Photoshop and LIghtroom. These filter sets knock user experience out of the park. They are really quite incredible. You have a ton of filters, that can be individually tweaked and adjusted, added together into recipes, layered, and individually tweaked again at every step of the process. Wow! This set of filters was originally fairly cheap, but now Google has decided to open them up to everyone for free! WooHoo! If you use Photoshop even a small amount, be sure to get the Nik Collection, you’ll be wondering how you got along without it.

My thanks to my daughter, who told me about this collection. She has an incredible eye for color, and found this collection to be indispensable when it came to processing hundreds of photos per hour.